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FAREWELL TO AMERICA 



HENRY W. NEVINSON 

Farewell to America 




NEW YORK B. W. HUEBSCH, Inc. mcmxxh 






COPYRIGHT, 1922, BY 
B. W. HUEBSCH, INC. 



PRINTED 



N U. S. A. 



CU600011 



This appeared originally in 

The Nation and The Athenczum 

of London 

and is reprinted with revisions 

by the author. 



FAREWELL TO AMERICA 

In mist and driving snow the tow- 
ers of New York fade from view. 
The great ship slides down the river. 
Already the dark, broad seas gloom 
before her. Good-bye, most beau- 
tiful of modern cities! Good-bye 
to glimmering spires and lighted 
bastions, dreamlike as the castles 
and cathedrals of a romantic vision 
though mainly devoted to commerce 
and finance ! Good-bye to thin films 
of white steam that issue from cen- 
tral furnaces and flit in dissolving 
wreaths around those precipitous 
heights ! Good-bye to heaven-piled 
offices, so clean, so warm, where 
lovely stenographers, with silk stock- 
ings and powdered faces, sit leisurely 
at work or converse in charming 

[1] 



ease ! Good-bye, New York I I am 
going home. I am going to an an- 
cient city of mean and mouldering 
streets, of ignoble coverts for man- 
kind, extended monotonously over 
many miles ; of grimy smoke clinging 
closer than a blanket; of smudgy 
typists who know something of pow- 
der but little of silk, and less of leis- 
ure and charming ease. Good-bye, 
New York! I am going home. 



[2] 



Good-bye to beautiful **apart- 
ments" and "homes" ! Good-bye to 
windows looking far over the city as 
from a mountain peak! Good-bye 
to central heating and radiators, fit 
symbols of the hearts they warm! 
Good-bye to frequent and well- 
appointed bath-rooms, the glory of 
America's art! Good-bye to sub- 
urban gardens running into each 
other without hedge or fence to sep- 
arate friend from friend or enemy 
from enemy! Good-bye to shady 
verandahs where rocking chairs stand 
ranged in rows, ready for reading the 
voluminous Sunday papers and the 
"Saturday Evening Post" ! Good- 
bye, America ! I am going home. 
I am going to a land where every 
man's house is his prison — a land of 
open fires and chilly rooms and fro- 
zen water-pipes, of washing-stands 
and slop-pails, and one bath per 
household at the most; a land of 
fences and hedges and walls, where 

[3] 



people sit aloof, and see no reason 
to make themselves seasick by rock- 
ing upon shore. Good-bye, Amer- 
ica! I am going home. 



[4] 



Good-bye to the copious meals — 
the early grape-fruit, the ^'cereals,'* 
the eggs broken in a glass! Good- 
bye to oysters, large and small, to 
celery and olives beside the soup, to 
"sea food," to sublimated viands, to 
bleeding duck, to the salad course, to 
the ^'individual pie" or the thick 
wedge of apple pie, to the invariable 
slab of ice-cream, to the coffee, also 
bland with cream, to iced water and 
home-brewed alcohol! I am going 
to the land of joints and roots and 
solid pudding; the land of ham-and- 
cggs and violent tea; the land where 
oysters are good for suicides alone, 
and where cream is seldom seen; the 
land where mustard grows and whis- 
ky flows. Good-bye, America ! I 
am going home. 



[5] 



Good-bye to the long stream of 
motors — ''limousines'' or ''flivvers"! 
Good-bye to the signal lights upon 
Fifth Avenue, gold, crimson, and 
green; the sudden halt when the 
green light shines, as though at the 
magic word an enchanted princess 
had fallen asleep; the hurried rush 
for the leisurely lunch at noon, the 
deliberate appearance of hustle and 
bustle In business, however little Is 
accomplished, the Jews, Innumerable 
as the Red Sea sand! Good-bye to 
outside staircases for escape from 
fire! Good-bye to scrappy suburbs 
littered with rubbish of old boards, 
tin palls, empty cans, and boots! 
Good-bye to standardized villages 
and small towns, alike in litter, in 
ropes of electric wires along the 
streets, in clanking "trolleys," in 
chapels, stores, railway stations, 
Main Streets, and isolated wooden 
houses flung at random over the 
country-side. Good-bye to miles of 
[6] 



advertisement imploring me in ten- 
foot letters to eat somebody^s cod 
fish (''No Bones!"), or smoke some- 
body's cigarettes ("They Satisfy!") 
or sleep with Innocence In the "Fault- 
less Nightgown" ! Good-bye to the 
long trains where one smokes in a 
lavatory, and sleeps at night upon a 
shelf screened with heavy green cur- 
tains and heated with stifling air, 
while over your head or under your 
back a baby yells and the mother 
tosses moaning, until at last you reach 
your "stopplng-off place," and a semi- 
negro sweeps you down with a little 
broom, as in a supreme rite of unc- 
tion ! Good-bye to the house that is 
labelled "One Hundred Years Old," 
for the amazement of mortality! 
Good-bye to thin woods, and fields 
enclosed with casual pales, old hoops, 
and lengths of wire ! I am going 
to a land of the policeman's finger, 
where the horse and the bicycle still 
drag out a lingering life; a land of 

[7] 



persistent and silent toil; a land of 
old villages and towns as little like 
each other as one woman is like the 
next; a land where trains are short, 
and one seldom sleeps in them, for 
in any direction within a day they 
will reach a sea; a land of vast and 
ancient trees, of houses time-honored 
three centuries ago, of cathedrals 
that have been growing for a thou- 
sand years, and of village churches 
built while people believed in God. 
Good-bye, America! I am going 
home. 



[8] 



Good-bye to the land of a new 
language In growth, of split infin- 
itives and cross-bred words; the 
land where a dinner-jacket is a "Tux- 
edo," a spittoon a ^'Cuspidor"; 
where your opinion Is called your 
''reaction," and where "vamp," In- 
stead of meaning an improvised ac- 
companiment to a song, means a 
dangerous female ! Good-bye to the 
land where grotesque exaggeration is 
called humor, and people gape in be- 
wilderment at irony, as a bullock 
gapes at a dog straying in his field! 
Good-bye to the land where stran- 
gers say "Glad to meet you, sir," 
and really seem glad; where children 
incessantly whine and wail their little 
desires, and never grow much older; 
where men keep their trousers up 
with belts that run through loops, 
and women have to bathe In stock- 
ings. I am going to a land of an- 
cient speech, where we still say 
"record" and "concord" for "recud" 
[9] 



and "conciid"; where ^'unnecessarily'' 
and ^'extraordinarily" must be taken 
at one rush, as hedge-dltch-and-rall 
in the hunting field; where v/e do not 
^'commute" or "check" or "page," 
but "take a season" and "register" 
and "send a boy round"; where we 
never say we are glad to meet a 
stranger, and seldom are; v/here 
humor is understatement, and irony 
is our habitual resource in danger or 
distress; where children are told they 
are meant to be seen and not heard; 
where it is "bad form" to express 
emotion, and suspenders are a strictly 
feminine article of attire. Good- 
bye, America! I am going home. 



[10] 



Good-bye to the multitudinous pa- 
pers, indefinite of opinion, crammed 
with insignificant news, and asking 
you to continue a first-page article 
on page 23 column 5 ! Good-bye to 
the weary platitude, accepted as 
wisdom's latest revelation ! Good- 
bye to the docile audiences that lap 
rhetoric for sustenance ! Good-bye 
to politicians contending for aims 
more practical than principles! 
Good-bye to Republicans and Dem- 
ocrats, distinguishable only by mu- 
tual hatred! Good-bye to the land 
where Liberals are thought danger- 
ous, and Radicals show red! Where 
Mr. Gompers is called a Socialist, 
and Mr. Asquith would seem ad- 
vanced! A land too large for con- 
centrated indignation; a land where 
wealth beyond the dreams of British 
profiteers dwells, dresses^ gorges, and 
luxuriates, emulated and unashamed! 
I am going to a land of politics vio- 
lently divergent; a land where even 

[II] 



Coalitions cannot coalesce; where 
meetings break up in turbulent dis- 
order, and no platitude avails to 
soothe the savage breast; a land 
fierce for personal freedom, and in- 
dignant with rage for justice; a land 
where wealth is taxed out of sight, 
or for very shame strives to disguise 
its luxury; a land where an ancient 
order of feudal families is passing 
away, and — Labour leaders whom 
Wall Street would shudder at are 
hailed by Lord Chancellors as 
the very fortifications of security. 
Good-bye, America! I am going 
home. 



[12] 



Good-bye to prose chopped up to 
look like verse ! Good-bye to the 
indlscrimlnatlng appetite which gulps 
lectures as opiates, and "printed 
matter" as literature! Good-bye to 
the wizards and witches who claim 
to psycho-analyze my complexes, in- 
hibitions, and silly dreams! Good- 
bye to the exuberant religious or fan- 
tastic beliefs by which unsatisfied 
mankind still strives desperately to 
penetrate beyond the flaming bul- 
warks of the world! Good-bye, 
Americans ! I am going to your 
spiritual home. 
February, ig22. 



[13] 



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MAR 81 

ST. AUGUSTINE 
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